


Aerial

by andnowforyaya



Category: James Bond (Movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-23
Updated: 2012-11-23
Packaged: 2017-11-19 08:36:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/571315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andnowforyaya/pseuds/andnowforyaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Q's afraid of flying, and James does not do things by halves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aerial

“Q,” James says with unexpected gravity, so that he pauses typing for just a moment and glances up, but Bond’s eyes are playful, light as the sky above a desert that hasn’t seen rain in months. He goes back to typing.

“Yes, you managed to bring in the chip in one piece. Congratulations, 007,” he tells the agent, eyes roving over the code on his laptop’s screen. Bond came in moments ago, a slight limp on his right side but otherwise in working condition, and tossed the tiny chip at Q, who thanked all the gods he didn’t believe in that the precious piece of plastic hadn’t landed in his tea. Now the agent stands there, a curious tilt to his head, blood slowly trickling from a cut just on his cheekbone. Q says, “Medical will be expecting you.”

“I always thought we called you Q because of your position,” James says in return, musing aloud. “Q for Quartermaster, but - no - you’ve always had a right to the moniker. Isn’t that right, Quincy?” He looks positively _smug_ , smirk plastered on his lips and eyes darkening.

Not that he has to explain, but: “My parents were musicians.”

James can imagine it, Q a little boy and sitting at the piano, developing those long, thin fingers, his mother singing above the light melodic press of keys, his father smiling as he reads the morning paper. They were probably a jazz family. He catches the use of past tense. “Were? What are they now?”

“Dead.” Q doesn’t falter, doesn’t even look up, the tapping of his fingers consistent and true, and the screen twists and changes in front of him. “Cancer, and a plane crash,” he answers in explanation to the agent’s unasked question, because they always ask that question.

James just nods. He should have known; they are all orphans, looking for a place with Mum. “Sorry,” he mumbles.

“I know,” is the response. “Now, medical,” his quartermaster orders, looking up at him beneath long lashes, an unpleasant curl in his lips.

James goes.

.

“My sister did not even beg for her life. That is how much she hated it. This one? This one will not beg, either.” She kicks at the kneeling figure before her, and James nearly puts his fist through the monitor at the abuse, growling.

“Where are they,” he demands, growing impatient, a mass of black anger in the pit of his stomach. “Tell me where the hell they are.”

It’s been three hours and twenty-eight minutes since Q went missing, one hour since this video surfaced, untraceable and mocking. They’ve watched the clip at least over a dozen times, searching for clues. In the video, Q is blindfolded and bound at his wrists and ankles, gagged and complacent. They think he’s been drugged. The woman is young and furious and beautiful, with hair as dark as the quartermaster’s and eyes blazing in grief and madness. James spots the tattoo on the inside of her wrist first, and grimaces.

In the video she wields a gun and holds it still between Q’s eyes, who must feel the press of cold metal, _he must_ , but he does nothing and the woman laughs, high and bright, and she puts pressure on the trigger, but does not pull it. “Did you promise to save him, too?” she asks, looking into the camera. The lights flicker and go out, and then the gunshot echoes. Eve has stopped gasping at the sound, but then the video begins to play again, from the beginning.

They let the video loop, and loop, and loop, and finally Tanner catches a clue.

“There,” he says with affirmation, pointing at something on the frozen screen. Eve scrolls back a few frames. “Stop. Stop! There. You see?”

James looks. James sees. The tiny twitch of Q’s index finger against his thumb, tapping out a code. A wry grin wriggles its way onto his lips, despite the dire situation. “ _Clever_ , clever boy.”

.

It will not be a game; it will be an execution. James does not do things by halves. Q will return to them whole.

.

MI6 charters a plane to take them home. It is small but luxurious, smooth beige inside and marble white outside. Q grips the armrests until his knuckles are white as the plane, back of his head pressed against the seat cushion, eyes shut while they take off. They sit across from his each other on one side of the craft, and if James stretches out his legs they could cross ankles with the other, but he keeps his knees bent and catalogues the tiny line forming on Q’s brow.

“Miss Moneypenny told me you didn’t like flying,” James begins softly, like talking to a spooked animal. The recovery period was short, cuts and bruises fading and Q’s knee in a brace for the next few weeks, but sometimes he still startles easily, so James observes and learns, and then he adapts.

Q keeps his eyes closed when he mumbles, “Took a Xanax. Should be fine.”

James cannot help but chuckle, and his quartermaster’s lips quirk at their corners.

.

After that, it’s a slow, perfect burn. Q’s elegant long fingers and James’ rough stubble marking the insides of his thighs.

They fall into his each other, and they fall, and they fall. “Clever boy,” James calls him, even when Q kicks him out of bed. He loves dipping his tongue into the hollow of Q’s pale collarbone, unwrapping Q’s fingers from his mug of tea and guiding that warm palm to him, tracing the sensitive skin on the underside of Q’s wrist with his teeth.

“Isn’t it time for you to retire?” Q quips, especially when they’re getting dressed in the mornings and James wants nothing more than a distraction and to distract. “You’re getting old.”

He smiles, and James returns it, little used and brittle, and everything goes to ashes.

.

Love is a tough business, transactions and I-owe-you’s and balancing your emotions so you stay in the black. The problem is, James has no capital, abandoned it or ripped it up into pieces, he thinks. Love is a red shriveled pit in his chest. Now he has nothing to give, and James does not do things by halves.

.

The fallout is silent.

James goes to medical when Q tells him to go to medical, presents him with computer chips and flash drives and, once, code scribbled on a used napkin. He loses his gun twice and has to recommission them, and Q complains about his branch’s budget.

So, nothing really changes. They just stop sleeping with each other, is all.

James never calls, anyway, so it’s not like Q is missing his messages. The agent stops coming around, so eventually he stops leaving out a second cup of tea. He listens to music for the rain in the mornings, and becomes a singular entity again. It is safe, and comfortable, and his fingers fly lightly over the keyboard.

“So that’s it?” Moneypenny needles him as they share black car service at 3 o’clock in the morning to finally go home. “You’re just done, like that?”

“It was never going to be a thing.” Q shrugs. “We both knew that.”

“That’s the biggest bullshit I’ve ever heard,” she mumbles into the window, arms crossed and watching the city go by. “Cowards,” she says, even softer, so Q pretends he doesn’t hear. The car stops and Eve gets out first, long bare legs in the chill of the night. She hovers and the cold trickles into the car, tickles at Q’s skin. Bent at the waist and peering at Q with a look he can’t quite name, she tells him, “It could have been a thing,” before she closes the door. “Think about that in your little computer brain.”

.

Q thinks about it in his little computer brain. The statistics don’t lie. If he and Bond had continued sleeping together, sooner or later Q would have wound up dead.

Or, Q doesn’t do long-term relationships, doesn’t really do _relationships_. He likes solidarity, Scrabble in the park, and always has.

Or, James’ very nature fights against commitment, except to queen and country, because everyday is a day that could be his last.

Or --

“Excuses,” Eve accuses. “You know when you were together, everyone knew it, because the missions were faster, smoother. And now that you’re not it makes the whole team uncomfortable.” She’s peeling an apple in one long strip with a small knife, hip against the edge of his table, and the floor is empty save for the two of them, lights glaring above.

“Based on what you’ve just said, James and I should start sleeping with each other again because it’s for the good of the team.” He takes a sip of cold tea and grimaces, scrolling green numbers reflected on the lenses of his glasses.

Eve cuts into the apple and breaks away the meat, spearing the pale flesh on the tip of her knife. She hands it to him. “I know how much you love your job,” she says.

Q takes the knife, bites into the sweet fruit. “Lie back and think of England, eh?”

A little tic in Eve’s lips like the beginnings of a smirk. “Something like that.” She takes her knife back and slices up another piece of apple.

.

As it is, James comes to him first. A mission that went pear-shaped, an explosion that took out a whole pier, Q working on another lead so that James’ communications were with another letter agent - R? - and he came back bleeding and disoriented and rough.

He’s pried open Q’s window and crawled in, trailing footprints, and a mug clatters to the floor as he crashes into Q’s slender frame, searching, searching, searching. “I missed this,” James says, hot against Q’s lips.

(He doesn’t say, “I missed you.”)

.

Q is not afraid of flying; Q is afraid of falling, of metal ripping to hot shreds and terminal velocity and nearest exits. The air is safe and the ground is safe - it’s the in-between that worries him. Now, he thinks, is the in-between, with James high above and Q down below and all that empty space they’re trying to fill. And James does not do things by halves, they’re either fucking or they’re not, all hot cold sharp soft edges slowly wearing away.

“Keep at it, Q,” Eve tells him with a conspiratorial wink. “He’ll get it one day.”

Q smiles, because Moneypenny believes the best in everyone, and she thinks he’s smiling because he’s happy, and pleased, and loved. Q smiles, but here’s the thing he knows about James: No, he won’t.

.

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted at my [tumblr](http://andnowforyaya.tumblr.com/post/36112334540/fic-aerial-00q-1-2).


End file.
